Brownsville Mayor Cowen Lags Far Behind McAllen, Harlingen Counterparts...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | What's he done, other than pose for a few hundred post-election photos? Not much, would be the immediate answer. And nothing like what new mayors Norma Sepulveda of Harlingen and Javier Villalobos of McAllen are busy doing for their communities.

John Cowen, shown at left in photo above, seems inclined to mosey into the job like a house wren squeezing into a home under the roof overhang. Quietly. Ruffling few feathers. Why wake up the town?

McAllen's Villalobos has been out mining Mexico for business he wants to bring to The City of Palms, an already prosperous constituency. In Harlingen, Mayor Sepulveda left the Election Night victory podium and began ordering infrastructure projects, such as street paving, a general clean-up of the city's parks and looksees for more work here and there. Like Villalobos, she also has been out and about, seeing and being seen, taking in local festivals.

Cowen?

Who knows what he's up to?

There's nothing to find when you go looking for something positive you can paste to his unassuming face and name. Brownsville is a sleepy town, but it currently seems eerily comatose under new Mayor Cowen.

There's been a nasty and continuing kerfuffle over at the BCIC, where cash monies dispensed for enterprising businessmen has drawn the ire of some in the community. Especially rankling, they say, has been an $85,000 grant awarded by the entity's board to former Mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez, who just recently left office. Not that Mendez wouldn't normally qualify. He's a well-known local businessman, what with his law practice and an excitable pizza eatery smack downtown. 

The critics, however, note in loud crowing that ex-city commissioners and the mayor are prohibited from lipping up to the supple BCIC tit for one whole year after leaving office. Not for Mendez. He'd just left a few weeks earlier!

Not a peep about that has come from Mayor Cowen, who just happens to be a good friend of the former mayor and, Brownsville being the chummy, Eh-vato-come-here-ese sort of political town, well, Cowen was never going to intervene.

But that's just politics. And some of the monies being dispensed by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) are said to have come from SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk back when he was courting local elected officials. Buying his ass in, in other words. Why, Maria, wasn't that the aforementioned Mendez out & about in town with Musk while Musk was here all through the SpaceX discussion and construction?

Yes, yes it was.

Cowen doesn't seem as inclined to be a very public mayor, not like Mendez was or like previous Mayor Tony Martinez, as public a dude as ever lived here. The new mayor always appears reserved, as if he's the mayor of, say, Republican Victoria or Karnes City up South Texas a bit. Almost too rural, I'd say, even as I know he is a graduate of elite Notre Dame and has tasted the best of Life.

A polished politician Cowen is not.

He's a smiler and a go-along, sure (see photo at right). And his personality is one a troubled city can appreciate, as Cowen will not raise his voice or fist...and never in public. He's from an Old Line Brownsville family. Public displays of anger? Not from this guy.

But what has he done?

And, or what is he doing? Is there a plan in there somewhere, Johnny?

Nothing comes back. We're not hearing it.

We're left with this: John Cowen has won the mayor's job and he has it in his pocket.

That's him over there, the quiet guy looking happy as a caged lark...

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